Ted 2007: A new kind of touchscreen

Don’t call it the Minority Report: I taped a brief clip of Jeff Han’s demonstration of the multi-touch computer screen but then I discovered that this clip was much better. (Plus, it has music).

Han has developed a multi-touch computer screen, which, instead of a mouse and keyboard, the touch of a finger — or fingers — can move around photographs and other files, zoom in and out, and shrink, enlarge and edit them on the screen.

It looks like the scene from the 2002 movie Minority Report, but don’t call it that, Han said.

In the movie, Tom Cruise stands in front of a futuristic computer screen and manipulates the data by waving his arms like an orchestra conductor. But “you really need tactical response to be precise,” Han said. “You don’t have that control when you’re waving your arms in the air.”

Han founded the company Perceptive Pixel in New York last year and recently began selling the machine, which runs on a regular computer and cost in the “low six figures.” Corporations have bought it to do work collaboratively — several employees can work on the same document at the same time, without having to pass around a keyboard or play musical chairs.